Having been to the Mohne dam this summer, one of the most striking aspects of the real life versus the film is that the topography around the dam is surprisingly flat, rather than hilly as per Derwent Water.

I came back and quizzed my 91yr old 617 sqdn Lanc pilot, and he said it wouldn't matter as the crates were pretty difficult to handle at that height and speed anyway.

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...r-2005-055.jpg

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...r-2005-060.jpg

You'll never get it to bounce from up there Wub :ok:

GDT
 

I went with good number of my initial officer training course (No 210)to watch the film in Cirencester's flea pit way back in 1965. Universal opinion at the de-brief in the Black Horse was a great film that did all concerned full justice. It was highly motivational stuff for young cadets who otherwise spent their days square bashing and knitting rafts together.

Really.

I must have missed the scene with the unteroffizer in charge of the gun crew walking out onto the parapet and popping off with his sidearm because that was all he had left.

Or the commandant of the women's concentration camp struggling through the flood to release the chained up females.

Seriously, there were a sh1tload of heroes that night. Some have not yet had their 15 minutes in the spotlight.

Read the book.

And don't forget this guy..

Given that Gibson was not exactly a likeable man, doesn't the fact that he thus named his dog give a character clue to the viewer? Lack of emotion/steely...

Perhaps the director of Dambusters "1" didn't make the point strongly enough. Nigger had been unacceptable for more than a hundred years prior. I made the connection in my early teens.

But in those days it was also a colour of paint that was jet black, similar to his mutt! Straight up, this was one of the other colours they did, see link below... Remember in those days the UK was not such a cosmopolitan population it is today and when the first black troops arrived from the USA they were treated as friends and equals, without any racial thoughts against them, as they should be, much to the chargrin of the white US troops who treated them poorly.


A Welsh View: 'Nigger Brown' Paint

Poor dog, if it knew the controversy he would spawn

Wingco Guy Gibson's dog was called "Nigger". It it a given
historical record whether the bloody tree hugging commie
PC brigade nutcases like it or not.

Yes, I know that. Just didn't want to be the first to say it, given the random and specious reasons that Mods apply to banning posters. As always, it is not the intent, or lack of it, to offend, but the perception of the recipient (or more likely a third party taking offence on behalf of others).

Mister B (as in "Bastard" - oops, am I alowed to say that?:O)

Interesting thread in a thread.

The last time I used the word was at Dunsfold in 1984 when I was briefing 4 chaps before demonstrating some flight test techniques to them in a Seminole. I was talking about spiral stability and said "the nigger in the woodpile is control circuit friction". The three white youths looked horrified and the black lad just grinned. I guess he realsed there was no racist intent on my part and that the common colloquial expression (at least when I was a lad) was just that.

In my view many adherents of PC fail to take the circumstances into account and as a result bring genuine PC (which I fully support) into disrepute. Shame really.

JF, the PC version used nowadays is "The non-reflective lurking in the lumber"!

BEages.

Oh dear. Some of us old dogs are not good at learning new tricks.

Oh fgs

When is it ever going to be possible to talk seriously about either the dams raid or the film of same without going on

and on

and on

and on

about that bloody dog's name. It's all been said on here before ad infinitum :ugh:

Shame that discussion about the film if poisened by harping on about that word, if the word is not used in a racist context it's just another word

I had a paint box back in my primary school days (before they called them primary) and it had two particular colours one black and one white but one, and I cannot recall which one was, let us say, Ivory Black or it could have been the white that had the contrary and unacceptable description.

Black and white are not actually colours PN, but I digress, there was an interview done by Steven Fry in last chance to see where he interviewed Mr J in a hangar and there was a full size Wellington replica in the background.

Let us not forget that Gibson took off on his first Operational Sortie at 18.15 on the 3rd September 1939 - returning at around Midnight. After his first Tour as a Bomber Pilot he became a Night Fighter Pilot (with "Kills" to his credit) before returning to Bomber Command.

None of us have had to do what he had to do over such a length of time!

Following on from the thread re Gibson dying when getting shot down attempting to catch out Lanc gunners, the last copy of Britain at War had a further letter to the one saying he died when bailing out saying he actually survived the bailing out but drowned when he landed.

In memory of a much loved dog that will be expunged from history because of the weakness and stupidity of the left.